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Hurricane Katrina: Blog for Relief Weekend
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What happens to a nation with a two party system, where one of the parties moves away from rational policy and reverts to base gutteral emotion? What happens when that party’s leaders fall back on the rhetoric of hate, anger and bitterness rather than offering viable policy alternatives? And what happens when the mainstream media ideologically supports that party and therefore fails to provide any meaningful scrutiny of it?

You end up with a country with a two party system in name only. One party continues to be actively engaged in governance, while the other party moves further and further away from the playing field content to shout insults from the sidelines. Insults that simplify, easily assign blame, that are aided by hindsight and insulated from accountability while being cloaked with the impression that a utopic solution has been forgone.

Facilitated by an irresponsible media content to engage in agenda journalism we end up with political discourse of the rediculous. To be sure, the ruling party is making mistakes. Policies can be improved. Viable alternatives exist. But real solutions are lost in a discourse of the absurd.

We saw it happen in Iraq, and regrettably we are seeing it occur with Katrina. Healthy discourse, open, honest debate, and an objective media which holds both sides accountable in the process, are essential to a functioning democracy. At the moment it appears that America has none of these.

Lorie at PoliPundit notes that Katrina is the new Iraq. Couldn’t agree more. The most glaring example in my mind is the hindsight-aided blaming, which could be directed at everyone but is only directed at Bush. Everybody and their dog believed that Iraq possessed WMD’s prior to the war – the French, the Germans, the UN, Clinton, Kerry, most members of Congress and Senate (at least the ones that spoke on the subject) – they all made proclamations of Iraq’s WMD danger. But it was Bush, and Bush alone, that “lied” to the public.

Similarly, the possibility of cataclysmic consequences arising from a cat 4 or 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans given its low sea level has been known by local, state, and federal policy makers for much of the last century. Get that – three levels of government, and the various officials and policy makers over the last century who occupied those posts. But where is the finger being pointed by the MSM?

When the rescuing stops and the clean-up begins (which in my opinion is the appropriate time to start focusing efforts on how this could have happened) a sober assessment on preparedness will be required. It’s regrettable that the MSM’s agenda journalism will in many ways thwart this process by limiting the scrutiny to Bush and Bush alone. Not only is this an abuse of the media’s position as public informers, it will have real negative effects. Such politically driven scrutiny, rather than reality based scrutiny, will no doubt detract from efforts to improve the system going forward and may potentially cost lives in the future.

Still waiting for baby. Tons of contractions but still more waiting to go. I’ll keep you posted.

Here’s new site set up just today by Deacon Dan (found in a comment at Blogs for Bush):

New site I’m trying to promote – www.katrinafinder.us. I built it today as a way, I hope, to help folks find loved ones in the disaster area. My sister was in Gulfport, Mississippi, when Katrina hit, and we haven’t heard from her. We’re hoping, but I needed to do something more, and that site was built today over my lunch hour.

I’d appreciate it if you could include a word about it when you’re out n’ about and blogging. And if you have any suggestions or want to help with the code, I’d gladly give out the “keys to the kingdom” to the FTP part of the site, and you can help me jimmy the code so it works better. Or if you run across people who want to help, point ’em my way, and we’ll get it set up.

I’m going to also put out some press releases tonight, and noise it about on the blogs, so hopefully people will find it useful.

Thanks, folks!

Dan, our prayers are with you and your family.

Thank you for setting this up.

If anyone can help out, please do.

Trackback to Basil’s Blog Covered Dish Supper.

Another new Katrina Aid site: Hurricaid.com set up by Kevin Aylward at Wizbang

Dish Network’s new ad campaign consists of people whose T.V. “sucks”. Their T.V.’s act like vacuums, things fly, and stick, to the T.V. set. The guest says something like, “What’s going on?”, the homeowner says, “My T.V. sucks, doesn’t yours?” The guest says, “No, I have Dish Network, it doesn’t suck.”

Now my four year old is asking if things suck. I really don’t need my four year old doing that, or using that word.

In my opinion, the new Dish Network ad campaign sucks.

On Sunday, a local gas station was charging $2.689 per gallon for regular unleaded. Today it’s $2.899. Another station nearby was also at $2.899. Around the corner and down the street a station had regular unleaded at $3.299. Down the street from there (at a place that is usually higher than the rest) regular unleaded was being sold for $2.799.

There was actually someone pumping gas at the $3.299 place!

Today, Chuck Schumer once again called for draining the Strategic Oil Reserves.

“If there was ever a time for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to be tapped, it would be now,” he said.

(Source)
As if this will do anything at all. There isn’t a problem with the supply of crude (which, of course, the Strategic Oil Reserve contains). The problem is with refining the oil we do have. 8-10% of America’s refining capacity is temporarily unavailable.

It doesn’t matter how much crude you have if you don’t have the capacity to refine it. More oil isn’t the problem. Turning it into gas (with all those “boutique” mixtures), diesel and heating oil is the problem and has been for quite some time.

After Hurricane Ivan, pipelines and platforms which produce and deliver crude were most affected. Now it’s the refineries. Refineries are currently running at near 100% capacity, more oil isn’t the answer, more refineries are.

More on this topic at Blogs for Bush.

Our 40,000^th visitor just came from Taiwan.

Regular Musers will know that my wife and I are expecting. It looks like her contractions have started (BTW I won’t actually be live blogging it, my wife would kill me – I just like the catchy title).

This whole birth thing is wild stuff!